Bénédictions

This is the taxi park in down town Kampala. This is were everyone goes to go. You ride a taxi (matatu) to the park to go get on another taxi to get to your destination. Lets say where ever your destination is, is about 15 miles. It will take you like 1 hour and 15 min to get there by matatu. And if the long wait doesn't kill you, just wait to you get inside one of these babies. Think of an old VW van with the mid engine underneath the front seats, you cram 4 bench seats that seat 3 all in the back then you have two seats in the front minus the driver, even if the stick shift is right in the way, it is still a seat. So count how many seats there are to carry people. I counted 14 not including the driver. When I first saw the lay out of the matatu I thought, man that has got to be a crammed taxi with 14 people in it. Boy was I ever wrong! They cram 30% more than the licenced amount of people they are supposed to!! I had a record that I made the second month I was here and it was a total of 17 in one taxi with 2 children. Then yesterday is when that record was broken which made me write this entry. 20 fully grown men and women in one taxi. I think one of my legs was on top of some one and the other was underneath another with 2 people standing up hunched over. It was funny because my dad tried to call me right when I was in the taxi and I just started laughing because I knew there was no way that I was going to get to my phone in my pocket non the less I didn't know where my hands were. The culture thing about all of this. As much as it makes all of you laugh and tell friends about this. It is nothing but normal here. It is absolutely normal. The Ugandans here would be bored to death if they had to read what I just wrote because this is normal every day life here.

So I learning not to laugh when someone willingly just plops on my lap in a taxi.

Normal



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